Since Adam and Achilles: Bible and Mythology in European Literature

The Bible and Greek-Latin mythology are not included in the European Constitution, but they are among the European foundation texts that have provided material and inspiration for surprising follow-up and development texts time and again from the Middle Ages to the present day. This handbook offers first-line help for millennial students who opt for a literary education, but who no longer receive this crucial heritage at home or at school and therefore only get to know it at university, and at an accelerated pace.
Since 2005, the authors of this collection have been teaching a crash course in Intertextuality, Bible and Mythology, in which students of the humanities are introduced to both traditions, along with a number of examples of how classical authors such as Shakespeare, Goethe or Joyce, but also contemporaries such as Umberto Eco, Hella Haasse or Paul Claes recycled biblical and mythological materials in sometimes very unexpected ways.
After a few years of trial runs, the time seemed right to bundle everything together in a handbook that will interest not only students but also a wider audience of literature lovers.